Fresh off the heels of WNYC’s two-day “Werk It: How to be a Grown-Ass Podcaster” event last week, the nonprofit, New York-based radio stations announced they would be launching a podcast accelerator. They’re taking applications.
That’s right: From now until July 15, when the application closes, WNYC will be accepting pitches for new podcasts. According to the online application, “five finalists will be paired with producers who will mentor and train the candidates, helping them hone their pitches—including storylines, character development, sound, texture, and voice—throughout the summer.”
After the summer, on Sept. 25, the selected finalists will make the cases for their podcasts in front of a panel of judges at ONA 2015 in Los Angeles. The selected winner earns the chance to produce a pilot episode alongside a WNYC producer, and, if they’re very, very lucky, they could be the next Jad Abumrad or Manoush Zomorodi.
“We’re excited to find and work with the finalists—who could be established print journalists or undiscovered personalities with no formal training—to help bring something completely new into the world and potentially, the WNYC roster of podcasts,” said Paula Szuchman, senior director of digital content at WNYC.
Podcasts are one of the fastest-growing and most intriguing media sectors the industry has to offer—according to a report from Edison Research, Americans listen to approximately 21,117,000 hours of podcast audio each and every day. Hit podcasts like Serial, Comedy Bang! Bang!, and more recently Starlee Kine’s Mystery Show have skyrocketed the medium into rising popularity—the Washington Post reported last fall that in the last five years, the number of unique monthly podcast listeners tripled to 75 million from 25 million.
So, if given the chance, what would your podcast be about? Personally, we’d like to see a Tom Hardy Feminisms Fanclub podcast come out of WNYC, but your idea’s probably great, too.
Photo via Patrick Breitenbach/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
